This week we kick off the conversation with a discussion of some of the key takeaways from Will’s programmatic ads conference called Shift which took place on Tuesday in NYC. He said that Vincent Layton of MagnaGlobal thinks that 60% of all online video ad spending will be done programmatically by 2019.

Donna Speciale, President of Turner Ad Sales, said the company is cutting ad loads in half on TruTV in order to deliver a better viewer and ad experience. The idea, she said, is to compete more effectively with SVOD services. She went on to say that the company expects to use data more extensively, For example, she thinks 50% of Turner ads will be data driven within 5 years.

Lou Paskalis, SVP Marketing at Bank of America, saw programmatic and data as ushering in a renaissance for marketing. He saw it as an opportunity for BofA to become a storyteller rather than just an advertiser. Like Ms. Speciale, he is convinced content and advertising will become much more relevant over the next 5 years.

This put me in mind of something Tim Connolly of Hulu said at INTX. He that the company is awash with data and that they are just scratching the surface of what can be done with it.

The major conclusion Will garnered from the Shift event was that TV is going to get smarter. And who can argue with that?

I review some of the new Digitalsmiths Q3 2015 Video Trends Report. The company says that 56% of US consumers have at least one SVOD service, with Netflix penetration well ahead of Hulu and Amazon. The company also noted a lot of variation between pay TV operators of SVOD penetration among pay TV subscribers.

Digitalsmiths also noted that OTA usage among those without pay TV has increased to 45%. I thought this might due to the retail DVR providers doing a good job of blending linear TV with SVOD services. I thought the combination could be perfect for the light sports consumer. Will didn’t agree, saying that OTA and SVOD together isn’t so great because of the need to put an antenna on the roof to receive signal.

For me, it’s all about choice, and consumers have so much more choice these days.